


this place that used to have a name

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Ecstasy in Cosmogone [17]
Category: Doctor Who (1963), Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Body Horror, Starvation, the sigil for an all consuming fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24789856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: The Doctor goes to Winking Isle.All is not well.
Series: Ecstasy in Cosmogone [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/770529
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	this place that used to have a name

**Author's Note:**

> There may not be any more of this, but have what there is.

This is not the Winking Isle he was promised.

Six texts from predecessors, similarities more sharp than difference: the lighthouse, the well, the agonizing scent of the ice-flowers. Poetic, clarifying, sacred. Committed.

He's been craving such dignity.

This place lacks all that. The half-crumbled structure that lords it over the isle, that's only a memory cast in rags, the fluttering wreckage of the circus tent (the one of her sacrifice) (the one of his own). Where there might have been a well is filled in by his thousand years of time, a grassy hollow hardly noticeable in its surroundings. And the flowers...no lilies or forget-me-not's, nothing proper to his search.

Instead the soft placidity of unconcerned grass is broken by exquisite studies in spun sugar, candyfloss woven into intricate stems and leaves and petals, melting on the tongue.

As he knows, because he's kneeling in his shirt sleeves in the dirt, tearing up blossoms by the handfuls to devour.

It's not enough. His flesh is crying out, too solid, too emphatic for one who's fought gods and demons and become both. There is no nameable presence in a score of universes he couldn't take down, if desired; no power nor principality nor his own shadow shorn and slain.

"Don't tell me this is what I fear," he murmurs, strands of carmel turning sticky in his hands. "I fear inevitable losses, the sacrifices I make to remain myself, the deaths that come to all things. I've made my peace with them."

The hunger ripping through his frame is dizzying, overwhelming; he rolls gently down into the hollow.

His shirt is stained into riotous colors, hat lost, skin tattooed from delicate petals. Mouthfuls after mouthful doesn't fill him, only brings on a thirst like dragonfire. 

_There was a purpose, wasn't there? Meditation, sacred circles- you used to be so good at those._

For now, crystals shatter against his teeth and tongue and throat, and the syrupy melt tastes of drowning.


End file.
